


it wasn't easy, but it was worth it

by foundCarcosa



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-26
Updated: 2017-01-26
Packaged: 2018-09-20 02:38:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9471686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundCarcosa/pseuds/foundCarcosa
Summary: A man without a mission is a broken man, but a mission lost is but a life found.Featuring a light dusting of Dark Tower references, because I'm me.





	

It had seemed so easy, at first, when his heart was still aflame with the desire to find Shaun. Awake and alive and so inflamed with pain and separation and the desire for justice, it had seemed so easy to take on the entire Commonwealth – raiders, scavvers, radroaches, yao guai, and all – for such a pitiful ragtag band of do-gooders who so obviously needed his fire.

It had gotten even easier when Preston Garvey smiled gratefully at him and called him _General,_ trusting him, needing him. He was on fire, after all, and a flame loved to be fed.

But Noah Kingfisher has been to the Institute, now. He’s been to the belly of the beast, and the flame is guttering; it is no longer easy.

* * *

The glittering energy in his eyes begins to dim, the lines in his face deepening. There’s confusion in his gaze now, as he stares at the expanse just over Preston’s shoulder; and, later, the confusion disappears, too.

The first time he comes back from the Institute, he is distraught. He rages, yells, berates the skies, and finally weeps. The second time, he simply weeps.

“How are you?” Preston asks after the third time, his gaze keen as he studies Noah’s inscrutable expression, but Noah just glances at him and shrugs before turning away from Preston’s comforting hand.

With every new thing revealed– Shaun’s identity, Shaun’s distance, Shaun’s numbered days– Noah’s fiery heart weakens.  
Though the flame had seemed to devour him, it is better than what awaited when the flame died out.  
Beyond the fire is only darkness.

* * *

The Minutemen don’t believe in Noah anymore. Preston is the last holdout, and even then only because he’s held Noah’s burning heart in his hands and pledged to care for it– whether Noah himself knew the truth of this or not.

And besides this, even as he prepared to meet the Courser, to do what his son bid him, he’d muttered one thing to himself, one thing that no one else but Preston heard–  
 _“This will not be. It won’t. I won’t let it.”_

He doesn’t know what Noah is planning, but for an instant, that fire had flared hot– the fire that burned away all that did not serve it. The fire that burned White, the fire that burned true, the fire that Preston could touch without being burned, because it knew him, and loved him.

If Shaun Kingfisher and his Institute did not serve it, it would burn them, too.

* * *

The Railroad was raring to go, but Preston hung back, his heart so loud that it drowned out every other sound. Noah noticed. It surprised Preston, because where once Noah had known his every mannerism and idiosyncrasy and the stories behind them besides, he had stopped acting upon that knowledge. He had begun to withdraw.

Today, on the precipice, Noah is wearing the General’s coat, and he takes Preston by the hand, and in his eyes the fire flickers briefly.  
“You don’t have to come.”

“I would not let you go alone,” Preston clarifies, because he’d learnt Noah’s every mannerism and idiosyncrasy and the stories behind them besides, and he knew what Noah needed to hear. “Never mind me, I’m just nervous. Big day. –Let’s go. I’m right behind you.”

* * *

Preston loses Noah in the melee, for a while. But he looks up now, as the battling on the main floor ceases for a time, and on the mezzanine above him, a synth of formidable proportion grasps Noah by the skull. Noah freezes, his eyes wide and blank, and the synth wrenches his head around to stare down at the rebels, Railroaders, and lone Minuteman below.

Noah raises his revolver, the simple but scarily deadly gun that he would never relinquish even for a better weapon.

Preston stares up at it, as frozen in its sights as its bearer is frozen in the synth’s mind-bending thrall.

The moment seems to stretch, in that uncanny way it always does as the spectre of death looms closer. Preston unthinkingly lowers his own weapon, thinking nothing, because the weight of what he felt could not be wrangled into words.

But Noah, his revolver trained on Preston’s chest… his mouth starts to move, and his hand starts to tremble, and Preston nods– he doesn’t know why he nods, exactly, any more than he knows why the spectre of death seems to balk, then recede, cowed into submission.

Noah’s soundless mouthing becomes a mumble, then proper speech– and then a strangled shout as he swings his gun arm in a vicious arc, slamming it into the synth’s shoulder joint, disconnecting entirely the robotic arm that previously held him captive. He discharges the revolver into the synth until it is spent, all the while still shouting–  
“Kill if you will, but command me nothing! Kill if will– command me nothing! Kill me! Command me not!”

* * *

It is finished.

The Institute becomes a ruin– as above, so below. Shaun Kingfisher, the man, dies with it… but there is a new Shaun now.

Likewise, there is a new Noah– the shell left behind when the fire burnt out. He stumbles on for a few days, until Preston corners him in their Sanctuary dwelling.

“Babe,” he starts, quietly, stepping up behind him as he stands staring numbly out of the window, and that’s when he notices the revolver on the window sill.

Even as his blood chills in his veins, Noah says lowly, “Take it. It’s yours. All of it is yours.”

“What are you talking about, Noah?” The fear is unmistakable in his voice.

“The child, too. The Minutemen. All of it. It was yours from the beginning.” Preston grabs his arm just under the elbow, trying to get Noah’s attention, his gaze, but Noah continues to stare out of the window, unresponsive. “So was I. But I died with Shaun.”

“Doesn’t look like it.” Preston’s voice is trembling now. This is as much a precipice as the showdown in the Institute was, as the trek through the Glowing Sea was… as the moment when the sole survivor of Vault 111 showed up at the Museum of Freedom with nothing but a fuck-it smirk and a revolver that sounded like thunder. But leaping from those precipices into the unknown served them all well, better than well in some cases.  
Beyond this precipice was only void.

“Don’t play dumb, Preston.  
I’m leaving. You. The Commonwealth. Maybe my destiny lies in the Glowing Sea. If not, at least it’ll be quiet–”

“Shaun didn’t need you,” Preston interrupts, gritting his teeth so his voice wouldn’t tremble so badly, “but I do. You don’t gotta care about the Commonwealth, or the Minutemen, or all the good you’ve done and can keep doing. Care about me. Because I’ve gotten damn used to you–”

“You’ll get over it.”

“Let me _finish,_ damn you!” He could steel his voice, but he couldn’t check his tears. So be it. “I swore that I would stick with you until I drop dead and can’t no more. So if you goin’, I’m goin’ with you.”

Noah’s numb gaze flickers. “No, you ain’t.”

“I said it, didn’t I? The Glowing Sea, you said? No rad suit? I’m with you.”

“I _have_ to do this. _You_ don’t.” There is indignation in Noah’s voice now, and a furrow in his brow, and Preston’s heart dares to hope.

“Why not? I swore before God – whoever or wherever he is – that I would never let you walk into darkness alone. Don’t matter what the darkness is. With you until the end, is what I said. Ain’t this the end, then?” The quiver is back in his voice, and so’s the accursed bad grammar that both he and Noah lapse into when they’re struggling to express themselves, and he squeezes Noah’s arm until he’s sure it must hurt. “Ain’t I still here?”

* * *

Noah doesn’t go to the Glowing Sea, after all, and so neither does Preston.

Time passes, as it does, even in worlds that have moved on, and eventually they are too old to do much more than reminisce on their glory days– and not-so-glory days, too. In those last days, as the spectre of death demands its due, _all_ the past seems glorious.

 _“Ain’t I still here?”_ is the last softly-whispered phrase Noah hears before he falls asleep, not knowing it is the last time– but knowing, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he’s glad.


End file.
